Using gratitude to help with a gambling addition

do you gamble are you one of those people who gambles goes to casinos plays the slots plays the lottery gets those scratch offs everyone michael cross here this is the daily grateful and i had an experience at a convenience store today that unsettled me and i had a conversation with a friend about it later here's one unsettled me when i went to the convenience store i went there to get a bottle of diet coke because i was thirsty there was a bunch of people ahead of me in line and i was rather amazed at how many people were buying scratch off lottery tickets i i bought scratch you know the last time i bought a scratch off lottery ticket was oh when the lottery first came out yeah when it first came out before they had the regular lottery you know we choose a number no they had a scratch off thing and for a dollar you could go buy one of those and i think the most you could win was 500 bucks or something and i bought a lottery ticket and then i got for christmas one day five lottery scratch off lottery tickets in a envelope for something to do with radio it was a christmas party i went to but i just don't buy those but i was watching today when like three people ahead of me bought scratch off lottery tickets and they didn't buy one and by the way i didn't know this i don't run the door on some things lottery tickets the scratch off lottery tickets don't cost a dollar anymore maybe they have i don't know but the ones that this one lady in particular was buying was ten dollar scratch offs and you could win a bunch of money i don't know i you know i didn't want to look like i was eavesdropping it but i was but i didn't you know it's just so you know she bought all these things and i said okay to myself well i'm somebody who will talk to anybody because that's just the way i am and i was curious i didn't understand this and i wanted to learn more so i asked her i said you just spent hundred dollars buying these scratch offs yes i did and she was you weren't you know did you see that i didn't have to take any money out of my pocket to do that i said why she was because i turned in winners and i had a hundred dollars in winning so i got ten more i saw why don't you just take a hundred dollars and you know go out to dinner just because this is this is fabulous i love this so much and i could walk out here without i said how long you've been and she's laughing at me and um she said well one time she goes i had she won a thousand dollars and she said and it was a real pain because it was over five hundred dollars she had to take it to some office over in tampa and she had to give him her social security number all this stuff because they were going to tax her on it and i said oh she's i don't like to win those and she's i like to win you know 20 bucks 50 bucks 100 bucks something like that okay that's interesting i would have never thought to do something like this never would i ever my experience with gambling happened in the 80s when my girlfriend who later became my second wife and i went to uh nassau in the bahamas and we actually have condo down there for a week don't go to nassau for a week that's hint number one nassau's been for a day don't go for a week although we had fun the condo came with a car that we got to drive plus you know we went out on scuba diving we had a ball we really did but at the end of the week we were ready to come back but anyway we i'd never been to a casino before she said i'd never been to a casino before and she said okay i'm gonna take you to a casino and i'm gonna teach you how to gamble i had never been to a casino before they had this big old casino out on paradise island in nassau and we you know she said i'm gonna take you and teach you how to gamble at this casino i said all right let's go so we walk into the casino and my gosh you ever been to a casino there's a million things going on in a million different directions wherever you you know wherever you look there's things happening there's lights there's just music there's just stuff happening constantly and she went over to this cashier and she comes back and she hands me a roll of quarters and she's got a roll of quarters and she says all right we're going to the slots i'm gonna teach you how to do slots i said okay you don't see it on tv this should be exciting and she said what you're gonna do this is the slot you want to use this machine she said you put uh five quarters in for each pull and you're gonna win something you're gonna come out of there with something i said okay she goes but i said let me go do it no no no no that's not the trick here's the trick is this a trick i don't know i don't know if this is a trick because here's the trick you watch somebody who is at a machine and you watch them for a while they've been there for a long time and they get wore out they walk away you go to that machine you're gonna win i said okay i can do that so she takes off and i'm just sitting there with my roll of quarters and i'm taking the quarters out of the roll and stuck them into this little plastic cup that i got and i said okay there's this couple this couple just sitting there at this machine they're just sitting there pounding quarters into this machine i watched them for about 10 minutes and finally they got up and they were disgusted and they left i said that's where i'm supposed to go i walk over there i put five quarters in a little thing by the way it's it's you know not like it used to be on tv you pull a little thing but it's all done by computers you know even even then it was done by computers and i won 100 bucks i said whoa i won 100 bucks for one pull five quarters at that point i said oh well this is interesting so i putting 100 worth of quarters in this cup was difficult i did i got it all done and i stayed at that machine i put five more quarters in and then i put five more quarters in and then i put five more quarters in anyway then i said okay this machine is no good i'm leaving i walk away i see this young lady come up to the machine as i'm walking away from me because i'm disgusted with it she puts five quarters in and she won 100 bucks i don't know you know she won a bunch of money she just she won money i gotta tell you about 15 minutes later it seemed like it was an hour but it was 15 minutes later i had no quarters left i had 100 bucks at one time no quarters left i said okay this was fun i want to go to the beach now so i went looking for my turtle dove and i'm going all over the place looking for her i can't find her and then i find her at the cashier i said oh she said yeah she goes i just took my credit card up there and got a 400 advance i said you did what she said i took my card up there i got a 400 advance so i can keep going and i said i got a better idea she's what i said let's go snorkeling and she didn't want to leave but she you know we left you know we left no snorkeling you know no no more slot machines off we went and you know what i was done with gambling that was it i said that was an interesting experience and she was saying well you know i think i could win i said yeah but let's go you know take the car and drive around and you know this sort of thing we we left i was fine with never ever entering the casino again and then that was fine let's fast forward 20 years i'm on a media cruise i had to go on cruise i'm not a cruise person i've never been on a cruise i went to a three-day media cruise again to the bahamas but it was all media stuff and they have all this wonderful thing and they have a casino on the boat i you know basically ignored the casino on the boat but i met a attorney there and his wife sitting out by the pool and they had just come from the casino and i said and i said how'd you do he goes oh we only lost about 800 bucks and i'm like what you know what and you know i get talking to them and they go you don't really do well at the casinos on the ships when we get to nassau we're gonna do really well i said oh okay that's interesting and then through conversation i can bring people out of everything i find out that he's out of out of dallas and his wife out of dallas he's an entertainment attorney and he's pretty successful i mean he had a big diamond ring on you he was doing good and he says we usually fly to vegas three times a year he's actually we don't even do that they pick us up and take us on a private jet and we go to you know vegas three times a year and i said oh he goes yeah and i said and do you win because we win sometimes i said but when you come back from vegas on that private jet how much money do you have and he's like talking around attorneys to do that he's like talking around his wife finally said we're usually in the hole about 30 grand i said okay that's why they fly you out there for free so you know put you up in a nice room and you get to go see Penn and Teller or whoever you want to go see i'd you know that's just that told me that that's a problem and i began to realize that there's something called gambling addiction so today after my experience at the convenience store i called a friend of mine another attorney by the way you know i said and he used to gamble this is another friend not the attorney i was talking about another friend he's an attorney who used to gamble and lost about everything kept his wife barely kept his wife but you know she was ready to dump him and i said how did you stop how did you stop gambling and you know he said he said one word and i said what he goes gratitude and i'm thinking to the back of my brain oh look that's a podcast i said please tell me more i said tell me exactly how you use gratitude to stop gambling and he said there's a bunch of ways he said you know you can set gratitude goals he said but i basically started off by writing letters to individuals the people that i knew that had pretty much been let down by me gambling i wrote all those people letters i apologize told them how grateful i was that they were still my friend even though you know i had this horrible addiction to gambling it's okay and he said then the other thing i did which is you know something i do just not every day is he had a gratitude journal but his gratitude journal was specifically about him being grateful for not gambling and all the experiences that he'd have that day because he didn't gamble okay that was his thing he didn't have a big rush and all that that some gamblers go for i mean i still i'm i just must be i don't understand it he obviously got high gambling but he writes in his gratitude journal all the things that he did that day that he's grateful for that didn't involve gambling and how grateful he was or is that he did not gamble that day i said all right all right and he says you know and i set goals he said but i have to set my goals very carefully i can't have long-term goals i you know when i talk to this is wednesday uh i'm gonna in my you know my goal on my one part of my gratitude journal is to go to friday without being tempted to gamble and i said okay and he says and then on friday when i didn't gamble i'm gonna extend that out to monday and he said just little tiny goals help me a lot so being grateful is something that can help it is something that can help with any problem that you're having or i guess any addiction the only thing i'm gonna do is peanut butter and i'm not ready to give it up but if i did have an addiction and i'm so grateful that i don't i would use gratitude as a way to cope with it as a way to try and improve it as a way to try and pull myself out of the abyss of whatever that addiction is so think about that my gratitude journal has three things in it every day nothing to do with gambling but three things in it every day so that's not much it's not a big commitment but three things all right we'll see you tomorrow you